The FoI Act received Royal Assent on 30 November 2000. The primary object of the legislation is to confer a right on individuals to obtain disclosure of information held by public bodies, including schools, rather than leaving public bodies to confer access to the information they hold as a favour. This is achieved in two ways:

• by imposing on public authorities a positive duty to make information available through the publication of schemes setting out what information it has decided to make routinely available and how/where the information is available to an interested individual.
• by giving the individual who makes a request for information the right to be told whether the body holds such information, and if it does, the right to have that information communicated to them, subject to exemptions. This individual right of access to information came into force for all public authorities (including schools) in January 2005.